The Delaware pediatrician who prosecutors say may have molested more than 100 patients showed a pattern of inappropriate touching that led to multiple complaints from patients and co-workers, according to court documents released this week.

But the police were unable to get enough evidence to charge him, the documents indicate.

Starting in 2005, police investigators received complaints about the pediatrician, Dr. Earl B. Bradley, of Lewes, Del., from eight patients accusing him of abuse as far back as 1999. At least one complaint was sent to a state medical group, but no action was taken to suspend Bradley's license and he was not charged, according to the documents.

Bradley, 56, was charged in December with 32 criminal counts relating to the rapes of at least seven girls, ages 3 months to 13 years. At the time, the authorities said they had received multiple complaints about the doctor roughly a year ago.

But the new documents, which include the accounts of three doctors and a nurse, indicate that concerns were raised far earlier.

In the spring of 2005, the Milford police tried to charge Bradley with offensive touching after a 3-year-old patient told her parents about his kissing her too much in at least one office visit.

No arrest was made, the Milford police said, because officials in the office of then-Attorney General M. Jane Brady decided they could not win the case, according to the documents, which were first obtained by The News Journal of Wilmington, Del.

A former office manager for Bradley told investigators in April 2005 that she filed a complaint earlier that year with the Medical Society of Delaware, which is a professional organization that does not license doctors. But officials at the society, as well as at the Delaware Board of Medical Practice, which grants doctors' licenses, said they never received any complaints from patients or alerts from the police about Bradley.

State law requires medical professionals to report anyone suspected of engaging in unprofessional behavior.

Attorney General Joseph R. Biden III, who took office in 2007, said Thursday that he had asked the state solicitor to investigate whether anyone failed to fulfill their legal obligation to report accusations of wrongdoing. Biden added that a preliminary review of records seemed to indicate that the prosecutor who handled the 2005 case recommended that the complaints be forwarded to state medical authorities.

In March 2005, a pediatrician who used to work with the doctor told investigators that he regularly referred to Bradley as a pedophile when talking about him with colleagues.

Another pediatrician who used to work at the practice described Bradley's habit of taking digital images of his patients and storing them on his computer. The doctor added that after he left Bradley's practice, many of Bradley's former patients transferred to him, complaining about Bradley's “;forcing children to get undressed when they didn't want to or taking their children away from their parents for several minutes.”;

One former office manager told the police in December 2008 that Bradley told her he installed surveillance cameras in his office that he could monitor from his home computer.

But the common element described in the testimony from witnesses and alleged victims was the doctors' tendency to do unnecessary vaginal exams.

One such description came from the parents of a 12-year-old girl who was taken to see Bradley for a sore throat and pink eye.

“;A throat culture was never taken, her temperature was never taken, a urine sample was never tested and a nurse was not involved, but child was given a vaginal exam,”; said the document, which was written by Detective Thomas Elliott of the state police in a probable-cause affidavit used to search Bradley's BayBees Pediatrics office on Dec. 16, 2009.

Bradley's lawyer, Eugene J. Maurer Jr., declined to comment.